The perfect thing to do in the post-New Year is to exercise (remember all our resolutions?), and to do this, we need the perfect outfit, right? So there was no better contest to come along at this time than the "Active Wear 2011" Contest.

Contestants in this event had to create active wear for themselves or others. What's active wear, you ask? Well, according to the contest rules, it's "intended for an active situation."

Look at the contest gallery, and you can see that the entries from the 29 participants ran the gamut from indoor wear to outdoor wear!

Kay Y had made a version of this jacket before, but it was losing its "oomph". She bicycles to work most days and needed something to replace her old garment. She decided to make this jacket again with some enhancements.

First of all, she decided to line it. This was the most difficult change but a necessary one, because she used gore-tex as the fabric. She added retro-reflective piping and made some design changes to increase visibility.

She also altered the design to promote air flow and ventilation and to prevent overheating, splitting the back to make a separate upper back yoke/vent opening.

She changed the elastic wrist to an adjustable velcro tab and replaced the hem drawstring with a safer lower band with more retro-reflective material.

She found the instructions unnecessary, because the jacket is so easy to make. And she loves it because, in her words, "the shape makes a great blank canvas."

Wendy Hahn made this adult outerwear ski type jacket of gore-tex with a Bemberger rayon lining.

She used tape rather than standard pins in sewing it, so as not to make permanent holes in the fabric. She found that she needed to use a longer stitch length to prevent seam puckering. She didn't want to damage the fabric with heat, so she used finger pressing and topstitching to make the seams lie flat. She also decided not to use interfacing for the same reason.

To enhance the gore-tex waterproofing, she used seam sealant. She used velcro rather than snaps for fasteners.

The many options for customizing this jacket made the pattern directions hard to follow, but she liked the pattern overall and will use it again to make jackets for her son and DH.